


Ozone and Strawberries

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Game Grumps, Hidden Almanac
Genre: #I am one of those people, #only two people will get this, Multi, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 08:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8242837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Arin hasn't come back from Echo Harbor, and Dan has good reason to be concerned.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheseusInTheMaze](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/gifts).



> This is for Theseus, who was awesome enough to invite me up to see Game Grumps Live and is a super awesome person all around in general. This fic technically takes place after their fic, "Let's You and Her Fuck" (http://archiveofourown.org/works/7258018) which you don't have to read to get this, but you totally should anyway because it's great. This also contains references to the podcast "The Hidden Almanac," which you don't have to have listened to to get this, but is a super great podcast (http://www.hiddenalmanac.com/) .

Dan didn’t know why he’d let Arin go off to Echo Harbor all by himself. Well, besides the fact that Arin was a grown ass dude who could make his own decisions and it’s wasn’t like they were around each other 24 hours a day. Well okay, they were together for most of those 24 hours sure, but that’s why time apart was so important too, and that’s why Arin had gone out to Echo Harbor for some sort of animation thing… or was it a music thing…?

Dan blinked hard at the headlights slanting through the rain and shining off the wet road ahead of him before reaching over and cranking the A/C up a little higher, even though he was already shivering, though some of that might have been worry and sleep deprivation. It was a 16 hour drive to Echo Harbor from Los Angeles, give or take, and he had been awake for even longer than that, trying to convince Suzy that everything was going to be all right, and that she should stay home in case Arin showed up. After all, maybe something had gone wrong and Arin had needed to catch a later flight, and his phone had died and he couldn’t call anyone, and he’d be back home any second now. Not that Dan believed that, as much as he wanted to. Arin had only been missing for eight hours by then, maybe too early for serious panic, if Arin hadn’t been anywhere else but Echo Harbor. 

Dan could tell that Suzy hadn’t been happy about him leaving, but Dan had done it anyway, even though seeing her with that look on her face had made something in his chest ache and feel hollow. But Suzy didn’t know about Echo Harbor, not like Dan did. He had passed through there once, back in the before times, before he had met Brian and Arin and Suzy, back when life had been different. He didn’t remember what had happened during those three days where he had lost time, not exactly, but sometimes he caught himself starting at the sky just before dusk with these weird almost memories of being something… bigger. Something with wings and fire. Had he breathed fire? Had he *been* fire? Had he….

Dan jerked his head up, his eyes snapping back open as he swore and jerked the wheel sharply to avoid hitting the tree he had been drifting towards. He knew he should pull over and like, take a nap or something, but instead he reached over and thumbed the button for the radio.

“…In the garden…” a voice with a strange, flat cadence droned. “Something has been eating the strawberries…”

“It’s an electric stag!” A bright, chipper voice interrupted. “I saw one running by the school the other day! They like strawberries. And peas. Well, most things really. They’ll be gone in the morning though, they always seem to disappear after a really big thunderstorm, no one knows why…”

Dan heard the crack of thunder over the radio and the sound of rain pounding on the roof of the car, felt it like a physical thing all the way down in his bones. He spared a glance at his phone’s GPS. Twenty minutes until he hit town. He could make it that long, weather and lack of sleep be damned. 

When Dan looked up, there was a stag standing in the middle of the road, right in front of him.

Tires squealed on wet pavement as Dan hit the brakes, trying not to hit the stag, or the trees on his right, or the guardrail that would keep him from careening off the twisty back road. There was a thump as the car came to a sudden stop, and he couldn’t tell if it was his head hitting the steering wheel that had caused the noise or if he had hit something. He stumbled out of the car, dizzy, cursing, then froze and stared.

The stag stared back at Dan, his brown coat dark with rain, his electric blue antlers spitting sparks when the rain hit them. The smell of ozone hung heavy in the air. The beast shivered as it looked Dan in the eyes, and Dan stared back, transfixed. Those weren’t the eyes of a wild beast. Those were the eyes of a human, and not just any human. Dan knew those eyes, had seen them filled with joy, flash with anger, shine with tears.

“Arin?”

The stag half turned, but not before Dan saw fear in those eyes, fear and longing and something else he didn’t have a name for. The beast looked up into the sky, and when Dan looked up and squinted through the rain he could see the electric blue lightning above crackling from cloud to cloud, like deer leaping through trees.

A rational person would have assumed that they had been knocked out in the accident and this was all some sort of fucked up concussion dream. But Dan didn’t want to take that chance. He had nothing to lose if this was a dream, and everything to lose if it wasn’t. Dan could see the muscles in the stag’s legs twitch, as if preparing to leap up into the sky.

“Arin, don’t.” It should have been a shout, but it came out as a whisper instead. “I know man, okay? I know.” He slowly opened his arms, blinking back rain and tears and the trickle of blood that was running down his forehead. “Come back Arin. Come back to Suzy. Come back to me.”

There was a long pause, and Dan felt his breath catch, only to escape in a sigh as the stag turned back to look at him and took a tentative step forward, breath streaming in the wet air.

“Yeah, that’s right. Just come here. It’s going to be okay man, just come to me.” Dan’s thoughts spun crazily to unicorns, and shit, he was so not a virgin. The stag took another step, two, three, only to pause and tense when another crack of thunder shook the air around them. The flash of lightning came so fast afterwards and was so bright that Dan was momentarily blinded by it, and even after he forced his eyes open all he could see was white and what if the stag had left, what if he was gone what if Arin was gone—

Warm breath blew in his face, ozone and strawberries, and Dan’s vision cleared to see the stag’s nose almost touching his.

“Hey there,” Dan whispered, his thoughts still spinning. He could fix this, right? This was like something out of a fairy tale, and there was always a way to fix things in fairy tales. Walking the earth in iron shoes or weaving a shirt out of nettles or something else, something simple.

Dan wrapped his arms around the shivering beast and kissed him, right between the eyes. The stag tossed his head, the electricity of the antlers cracked and sparked against his skin, buzzed painfully through his veins and his blood and his bones, and he didn’t care, just kept hanging on and there was a bellow like thunder that dwindled into something smaller, something human.

Arin blinked up at him, eyes bewildered. “Dan? What are you doing here?” He looked down. “And why am I naked?”

Dan’s laugh was louder than the thunder as he held Arin even closer before kissing him again, properly this time.


End file.
